(Special note for the less J-saavy/more sane members of the audience, in the context of the title, "fucking" is acting as the word "kidding." See the informative history lesson on the versatility of the word "fuck" here.)

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Keith Olbermann writes a fantastic piece, "The Beginning of the End of America", that everyone should read. It's so good... (How good is it?) I'm so glad you asked. It's so good, it made me quote Ronald Reagan in my title.

Ok, the Johnny Carson bit there was unnecessary and unfunny, but still, take my word for it, read Olbermann's piece. It's one that (I think) can speak to Middle America, something us lefties are too reluctant and too infrequent in doing.

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

A couple of posts ago, I talked about Juan Cole and Virginia Tilley discussing how Iran's threat to us is far, far overblown. New J-friend S' (S prime, to distinguish from the heretofore unmentioned dear and good J-friend S) knows someone who is actually a refugee from Iran, who strongly feels the Prez IS a mad, anti-semitic all-around bad guy posing a threat to Israel, Iraq, and the US, and cites first-hand many instances of oppression against the Iranian people who, she says, are not in step with the extremist views of their leader but are kept from positive stances for the US by violent means. Even though I feel that anecdotal evidence is almost never conclusive evidence, I did want to make clear that I don't disbelieve that Pres. Ahmadinejad is an all-around scary or bad guy. I guess the two points I wanted to make were: A) I staunchly disbelieve the US media's portrayal of him, and doubt that they've taken him in context on many occasions, and B) that it seems at least possible given (A), that the characterizations of Ahmadinejad have been inaccurate. Of course, the true rulers of Iran (from what I understand), the Mullahs, certainly do not seem like nice guys or, you know, advocates of freedom or anything else I believe in. I think whatever the case, they're pulling Big A's strings (tired of spelling out his name), and whether or not he is truly so anti-semitic becomes somewhat moot seeing as how the true leadership may very well be -- and is certainly tyrannical. S' pointed this out, that even if it isn't Big A but the mullahs who are the crazy violent bad guys, does it matter in terms of Iran's threat? Thinking on this, the answer is of course no... even if Big A is actually and quietly the most liberal and open-minded person ever, but he's following their orders, well, the result's the same. BUT, as the Juan Cole article I linked to in my other post reinforces, there's not particular good reason to think that they'd pose a nuclear threat. For one thing, it's unclear if they even ARE making weapons-grade uranium rather than, as is their international treaty-ratified right, making power generation uranium (light water nuclear reactors have different enrichment needs than nuclear weapons). If they are, it seems almost certain their capacity is only such that they could make a weapon years and years from now. And even if they DID have "The Bomb," I think an important question is: are the mullahs REALLY crazier than Kim Jong-Il, the Cold War Russians, or the Pakistanis and Indians in regards to their feud with each other? I mean people said that we just didn't understand, Pakistanis and Indians hated each other so much, they were WILLING to face mutual annhilation, and so a nuclear attack WAS GOING TO HAPPEN. Just cuz it hasn't yet doesn't mean it won't, but... I simply do not believe that the mullahs, any more than Hussein, Kim, Gorbachev, Brezhnev, or Pervez care so little for their own comforts or lives that they accept mutually assured destruction, or even just the destruction of their country (where would they go to be dictator, ruler, and/or wealthy statesman?). They are, as our president calls them, irrational -- but only if you are so humanistic as to regard the intentional mistreatment and oppression of any person or peoples irrational. It is horrible and reprehensible, of course, but the fact is that they're getting material benefits -- it's not irrational. Causing (as they must know it would) the destruction of their power base, their home, their resources -- I have yet to see anything, anything that proves the mullahs or Ahmadinejad are on that road.

In response to Scott Adams, of Dilbert fame, here (or more accurately, his post here). I also saw many other lucid refutations, or at least, bones of contention, manyofthem more cogent than mine, or at least shorter...

As some have commented, this argument is somewhat futile, not necessarily because one cannot determine whether free will exists or not, but rather because if you accept personal responsibility as real (as Adams has it), then whether or not there is free will changes *nothing.* Nada. Zip. I've just been told that my sequence of actions, including writing this post instead of working on my dissertation was, I suppose, an inevitable result of the chain of events before it. But, for the purposes of living my life in a satisfying and orderly way, I cannot therefore use that as an excuse to never work again because I "can't help it." I suppose by Adams' reasoning, my previous experiences, my biology, etc. will drive me to spend (slightly) more time working than posting to achieve various things important to me.

BUT: despite this futility, I am compelled nevertheless to rebut a little bit of Scott's reasoning.

The more interesting (I think) rebuttal is that free will as Adams' describes it doesn't seem to be possible in a universe with rational laws (not rational actors, just laws of reality). He describes it as doing something breaking the chain of causal events before it. As I'm going to explain below, there's good reason to believe that many, many things in human society actually ARE indeterminate to some extent (based on the same finding in ecological systems). Meaning: if you wound history up somehow and replayed it, events might happen differently even with the exact same starting conditions. You could call this the vagaries of probability -- because behavior at least is, I think, probablistic -- a given person may choose differently in the same situation with, again, all the same starting conditions. That is, when faced with a big mac, a given person as a dieter may have a 95% chance of eating it, and a 5% of not. Or a newly-minted vegan a 50/50 chance. Mathematically, even given a complex model of decision making, the most you could get would likely be a probablistic answer. So is falling into probablity free will? I don't know. It doesn't break the chain of causal events...

...but then, really, what does? Adams' definition of free will requires people to act at random, it would seem -- that is, at odds with their own experience or circumstance. I guess it would be something like me getting up right now and killing myself -- when I have no reason to do so. Or does it have to be more crazy? A glass of water combusting? A person becoming a bird out of choice? If it is simply that I won't jump out a window because I'm a product of all the causal factors before now, well then, non-free will is a call for an irrational universe. I mean, given free will and all other things being equal, you'd think people would act according to their will in order to satisfy themselves the most in their lives -- monetarily, sexually, etc. So this system would seem to exactly emulate our system. The only way to have a system PROVING Scott's idea of free will would seem to be people running around setting themselves on fire, deciding to become a homeless person for the rest of your life, eating poisonous food for not reason, slapping your loved ones unprovoked -- I mean, only these things seem out of line of what a person with free will would choose, if you still assume people would want to make themselves happy. The only alternative I see is if you relax that assumption, and people don't want to make themselves happy nor successful. This, in turn, is very unlikely to happen in a universe with rational laws simply because such an population of entities without any sense of self-preservation would quickly become extinct. So, as Adams' defines it, free will is impossible unless the laws of the universe themselves are variable -- similar to my ex-girlfriend's believing that altruism isn't altruism if you enjoy, or at least feel emotional rewards for, helping people . One may define true altruism as only cases where you help people, at a cost to yourself, AND not liking it/thinking it's a stupid or horrible idea, but that's such a ridiculous definition as to not be useful. Same with this.

(now, the boring part... or at leat, MORE boring part)

For, though quantum mechanics do not, as a rule, trickle up into indetermination in the macro-world, chaos mathematics creates similar indetermination to quantum mechanics. There are two forms of chaos: determinate and stochastic. The second is easier to explain: it's "noise," it's all the bunches of little chances and changes that make, say, weather, hard to predict. But famous scientist (ecologist/theoretical physicist/mathematician) Robert May showed decades ago you could also have chaos from a simple equation and a time lag. To sum up, let's compare "conventional math" to "chaos math" -- in conventional math, the underlying assumption of ALL of it is that an incredibly small change in the "inputs" of an equation will lead to proportionally small change in the output -- or more precisely, that as the change in input goes to 0, the change in output also goes to 0. Chaos math turns that around, saying that in some systems, as the input change goes infinitely close to zero, the output can change unpredictably. It turns out that this can happen even in a simple mathematical system; imagine if you have bunches of these overlayed on each other? There simply IS no determinate result. There can be probabilistic results (as in quantum physics), and people may obey these as other systems do (i.e in a large enough sample, people will come out as the stats -- 70% doing A, 30% doing B). Is that free will? I don't know.

About Me

Over the past 10 years, I've become much more aware of the deeper issues, currents, and tendencies around world events. Although things in the belly of the beast appear to be worse than I ever imagined, I nonetheless seem to have circled the Mobius strip of cynicism and still ended up on a different side than I began; for me, cynicism and hope appear to be a sort of Ascension cycle or emotional Ouroboros, as I have returned to the beginning and found hope in my cynicism.
I've staked out this little e-space for debate on subjects of interest to me. Real debate, with listening, rebutting, and actual learning -- instead of just lists of "on the one hand" and "the other hand" we're apparently supposed to add up and award the "truth" to the guy or gal with the most "points" -- is what I'm about here.
So, the purpose of this blog: TELL ME WHERE I'M WRONG. I have some strong opinions, and I want to hear where they don't make sense (and where they do). It's only through dialogue -- dialogue with those we don't always (or even ever) agree with that we can change the world and become all that we're capable of.